THREE+ME: The stepmomming stuff that scares me this Halloween

Ghosts? Vampires? The monsters in my mind hit a little bit closer to home

Em LeighHerald News Staff

I sleep like the dead.

Anytime, anywhere, I can pass out and good luck getting me back up.

Sometimes, it’s fine, like on the couch during a movie.

Other times, it’s less fine, like behind the wheel of a car. (Note: I did pull over and take a nap. This is why my husband usually drives us when we’ve got long distances to cover.)

But in general, I don’t lie awake at night trying hard to fall asleep. Even when I have a lot on my mind, it’s not enough to keep me up.

See, instead of spending my should-be-sleeping time on worrying, I make sure to do all my worrying the rest of the day. And during that time, I’m no slacker. No sir, I worry, and overthink, and stress out like a pro.

Especially since I became a stepmom.

Over the past two years and counting, I’ve been surprised at just how much of that worrying I spend on the kiddos.

It’s an odd transition, I guess, going from worrying about yourself (as a single person) to worrying about an entire family (when I met then married my husband, with his two little ones). You find a whole new world of things to overthink about.

Now that it’s Halloween, we’re supposed to be scared of ghosts and monsters and creepy-crawlies. That’s what we should worry about, this time of year.

But what about when the ghosts you’re concerned about, are the images of what your stepkids could be when they grow up, if you don’t do All The Right Things now while you have a chance?

What if the monsters that jump out of the closet are twists and turns in their behavior that you didn’t see coming?

What about when the creepy-crawlies aren’t spiders, but the feeling you get when you wonder if you’re not doing enough?

Those are the things that scare me, the fear that somehow, some way, the kids won’t be all right. That eventually they’ll look back and say — “I wish my parents and Em hadn’t done [this]. Or gave me the opportunity to do [that]. I wish I knew then what I know now.”

So I worry. I overthink. I may not lose sleep, but I do get scared.

When I’m awake, if I counted up all the hours of mental energy I regularly put into wondering what chores we should give them, what activities they should be involved in, what lessons we should enforce, what kind of example we’re setting for them — in general, what I should be doing better — it would be a decent number.

And at the end of the day, what if all that isn’t enough? Because even if We, The Adults — the kids’ dad, mom, and me — do everything “right,” we’re still not their whole world.

The kids have lives beyond us. Sure, they’re young yet. (I’m terrified of when they get older and the whole “they have their own lives” thing becomes even more pronounced.) But they’re at school, where they’re in an entirely upsupervised-by-us environment for a huge chunk of the day. They’re in gymnastics. They’re at Boy Scouts. They’re between their mom’s house and our house, and in all these transitions, we can only keep an eye on so much.

As a human, my instinct is to stay on top of all variables, keep track of everything that could mess with the kids, control all the out-of-control factors.

But as a stepmom, I can’t do that.

As their dad, my husband can’t do that.

As their mom, my husband’s first wife can’t do that.

None of the adults in the kids’ lives can keep them in a bubble.

And that’s what scares me, this Halloween.

But after the pumpkins get put away, the skeleton decorations go back in the closet, and the spiderwebs get cleared out, I need to remember that worrying isn’t the solution. Neither is overthinking.

Maybe slowing down, taking time, savoring the little things, being there to listen or give a hug when they need it — that’s what I should focus on instead. And maybe that’ll make the monsters in my mind a little less scary.

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